Tag Archives: Max Mandel

SCO / Emelyanychev

Posted on by

City Halls, Glasgow/Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

It is not yet an imminent problem, but there are two succession issues that the Scottish Chamber Orchestra will have to address, and they both look challenging.

Scottish composer Jay Capperauld has set a very high bar for whoever follows him as the orchestra’s Associate Composer, in providing bespoke works that suit every aspect of the SCO’s multi-faceted schedule. He was at it again last week with the world premiere of his Stylus Scarlatti, arrangements for chamber orchestra of four keyboard sonatas from the first half of the 18th century by Domenico Scarlatti, precision-tooled to fit Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev’s now-annual “Baroque Inspirations” concerts.

In those, the conductor, often leading ensembles from the keyboard and throwing in some wind instrument playing during the interval, matches classic early music with more recent works that draw on that era. Capperauld’s new work was perhaps one the most straightforward pieces he has supplied to the SCO library, but in its nods to the way other modern composers – like Michael Nyman – have visited the same territory it was characteristically knowing, as well as containing music tailored to specific solo talents in the orchestra.

The other challenge will, of course, be the eventual departure of Emelyanychev himself. It is almost inconceivable that there may be someone else with his combination of talents and enormous, infectious, energy waiting in the wings.

On Sunday afternoon at the Queen’s Hall, “Maxim & Friends” teamed him with the SCO’s string section leaders for two Schumann chamber works from 1842: the Piano Quartet, Op 47 and the Piano Quintet, Op 44.

With the string players using gut strings, Emelyanychev’s keyboard was a London-built 1888 instrument from French piano-makers Erard, borrowed from Glasgow University. Its distinct ringing tone – absolutely clear even if it lacked the muscle of a modern concert grand – combined beautifully with the string sound in a performance that may have been very close to how the works were originally heard, but refreshed them bracingly for modern ears.

These demanding pieces, composed for Schumann’s virtuoso wife Clara and the top string players in Germany at the time, are among the sunniest he wrote, particularly the Quartet, with its lovely Andante Cantabile movement – set up here by a startlingly brisk account of the Scherzo.

Both are in E flat, but the Quintet is more epic in scale as the composer explores and reworks his material with the thoroughness of a Beethoven symphony. The performances of both, with Emelyanychev’s keyboard skills matched by those of violinists Stephanie Gonley and Marcus Barcham Stevens, Max Mandel on viola and Philip Higham on cello, were absolutely first rank.

At Glasgow’s City Halls on Friday evening, there was a very specific chamber approach to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 3, played by just ten strings, opening a programme again played entirely using gut strings. Both warm and rustic-sounding, the sound gave a particular quality to an expanded ensemble for Britten’s youthful Simple Symphony which suited its folk-influenced music well.

For Handel’s Water Music, it was a more hybrid band on stage, with modern rather than natural horns joining the ensemble. Perhaps that was simply a pragmatic decision, for reliable accuracy of pitch, but the result was more than satisfactory, and the little harpsichord flourishes at the start of some movements were a characteristic Emelyanychev addition.

SCO Principal Condustor Maxim Emelyanychev directs the orchestra in a programme of Baroque Inspirations, featuring works by Bach, Handel, Britten and Schnittke, plus the world premiere of an arrangementt of Scarlatti keyboard sonatas for orchestra (‘Stylus Scarlatti’) by the SCO’s Associate Composer, Jay Capperauld.

As was the procession of a few of the players to the foyer during the interval, heralded by a drum beat and led by the conductor himself playing a selection of early flutes and recorders. Perhaps this ingredient had more impact when it was a complete surprise to the audience and front of house staff, but it was still great fun, even if the SATB choral Spanish work handed out on hymn sheets for audience participation was a challenge too far for many ticket-holders.

Friday’s programme ended with a work from the conductor’s native Russia that was composed by Alfred Schnittke just eight years before Emelyanychev was born.

There is indeed “Baroque Inspiration” to be heard in Schnittke’s Gogol Suite, a sequence of eight short pieces based on short stories by the writer, but there is also the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro. At other times, however, it sounds as much like the Merry Melodies of Warner Brothers cartoons or the pantomime of Spike Jones and his City Slickers.

With the players still gut-strung, the band included perhaps the most integrated use of electric guitar and bass guitar that any composer has achieved, a vast panoply of percussion from the whole toy box to tubular bells, and no fewer than four keyboard players. Simon Smith was imperious on concert grand, Stephen Doughty and Andrew Forbes covered harpsichord, celesta, and something invisible in between, and Emelyanychev himself handled the centre-stage prepared piano which played out the ominous “Testament” at the end.

The expression “multi-tasking” barely hints at what the SCO’s Principal Conductor brings to the job.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Maxim Emelyanychev by Andrej Grilc; picture from City Halls foyer by Christopher Bowen

SCO / Gonley

Posted on by

City Halls, Glasgow

Paradoxically, one thought prompted by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s performance of Schubert’s Symphony No 4 was whether the orchestra and Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev intend to complete a survey of Schubert symphonies, having already recorded three of them for Linn.

What would Emelyanychev bring to this one, once labelled the “Tragic” and sometimes dismissed as lightweight and derivative by comparison with others in the composer’s catalogue? Without a conductor on the podium, the SCO, under the minimal direction of leader Stephanie Gonley, produced a dynamic interpretation that gave the lie to that opinion, and grew in stature as the work unfolded.

For a small orchestra, the players managed to produce a mighty sound at times, particularly in the finale, which combined impact with clarity. Before that the Scherzo was fleet and fun, even if it does owe a debt to both Beethoven and Haydn, and the Andante, wonderfully resonant from the lower pitched instruments, had a profound edginess.

Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, on the other hand, is agreed to be an early masterpiece, and was the headline piece of the concert, which was originally scheduled to be directed by Lorenza Borrani, leader of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Instead it was Gonley who partnered first viola Max Mandel as soloists, with the pair communicating equally with their colleagues in a performance for which a conductor would have been superfluous.

There is an equal division of labour between violin and viola throughout the work and this reading really shifted up a gear with the dialogue of the cadenza at the end of the opening movement, a conversation that continued in a very moving account of the central Andante. If the Presto finale sounds at times like the overture to an opera the young composer had yet to write, the slow movement is to all intents and purposes the hit aria.

The overture to this concert programme was a world premiere, no less, and another fine new work from the orchestra’s prolific Associate Composer, Jay Capperauld. Carmina Gadelica, or “Song of the Gaels”, takes its inspiration from the rich musical traditions of Scotland’s Western Isles, including the unaccompanied Psalm-singing of the Free Kirk, the metronomic work rhythms of Waulking Songs and, finally, country dance music.

Composed for a ten-piece wind ensemble in five distinct movements, Capperauld’s imaginative scoring is as beguiling as always, even if this is one of his less esoteric works. In fact it is easy to imagine it becoming the entry point for many new listeners to appreciate his music, although having wind soloists of the quality of those in the SCO was a huge advantage for its first performances.

Keith Bruce

SCO / Emelyanychev

Posted on by

Stirling Castle

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra could not have engineered it, but a remarkable coincidence of featured artists provided principal second violinist Marcus Barcham Stevens with priceless material for his spoken introduction to Tuesday’s programme in the Great Hall of Stirling Castle.

Playing Max Bruch’s rarely heard 1911 Concerto for Clarinet and Viola were the SCO’s Principal Clarinet Maximiliano Martin and Principal Viola Max Mandel. The orchestra was conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev and – just to max-out on Maxes – the work was originally written for the composer’s virtuoso clarinettist son, Max Felix Bruch.

The work itself begins in a mellow fashion. The range of the two solo instruments is so similar that violists play the late works Brahms initially wrote for clarinet, and in the second movement – a very moderate Allegro indeed – Mandell and Martin completed one another’s phrases like an old married couple. The music is, in fact, occasionally reminiscent of Brahms, as well as of Mahler, and the opening fanfare of the brisker finale was sufficiently like Mendelssohn it would have been small surprise to see a bride make her entrance from the back of the hall. Not a neglected masterpiece, then, but a welcome change from the little of the composer’s output we hear all too often.

The concert had begun with the world premiere that has launched the SCO’s 50thanniversary season, Associate Composer Jay Capperauld’s The Origin of Colour, so the second half performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No3 was the first well-known music of the evening. It would, however, have been a treat also to be hearing the Eroica for the first time, as Emelyanychev launched into a bold account of the first movement, achieving a terrific balance of the instruments and losing no detail of the score in what is not always the most forgiving of acoustics.

There was an airiness about the Marcia funebre initially as well, but by its end it had strayed on the wrong side of the line between stately and lying-in-state. Evidently exhilarating to play for, the SCO’s Principal Conductor usually finds the ideal combination of scale and pace in bringing the lessons of historically-informed performance to the podium, but his tempi did not seem quite so assured here. Although the Scherzo came out of the trap like a hare, he subsequently gave the horns rather more space than they wanted for their hunting calls. Happily conductor and players were on firmer ground in the rhapsodic variations of the Finale.

If the Beethoven was not a complete triumph, Capperauld’s new work assuredly is. In some respects it is quite conventional stuff from a young composer whose catalogue so far is impressive in its eclecticism. The opening of percussive effects across the orchestra giving way to a chorale of winds is a well-marked path, and the blend of melody and orchestration that follows is close kin to Aaron Copland, which is a high bar to reach.

Subsequently there are moments that call to mind Leonard Bernstein and John Adams, which is to say that this musical evocation of colour coming into the world is very colourful indeed for almost its entire duration. Few are the contemporary works that you’d put good money on hearing again on a regular basis, but The Origin of Colour sounds very like a racing certainty.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Jay Capperauld by Euan Robertson